Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 3 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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It Is Vain To Seek To Destroy The Power
Most Firmly Established On Earth, Namely, The Testimony Of History.)
The War With The Cacique Hatuey Was Short And Was Confined To The Most
Eastern Part Of The Island.
Few complaints arose against the
administration of the two first Spanish governors, Diego Velasquez and
Pedro de Barba.
The oppression of the natives dates from the arrival
of the cruel Hernando de Soto about the year 1539. Supposing, with
Gomara, that fifteen years later, under the government of Diego de
Majariegos (1554 to 1564), there were no longer any Indians in Cuba,
we must necessarily admit that considerable remains of that people
saved themselves by means of canoes in Florida, believing, according
to ancient traditions, that they were returning to the country of
their ancestors. The mortality of the negro slaves, observed in our
days in the West Indies, can alone throw some light on these numerous
contradictions. To Columbus and Velasquez the island of Cuba must have
appeared well peopled,* if, for instance, it contained as many
inhabitants as were found there by the English in 1762. (* Columbus
relates that the island of Hayti was sometimes attacked by a race of
black men (gente negra), who lived more to the south or south-west. He
hoped to visit them in his third voyage because those black men
possessed a metal of which the admiral had procured some pieces in his
second voyage. These pieces were sent to Spain and found to be
composed of 0.63 of gold, 0.14 of silver and 0.19 of copper. In fact,
Balboa discovered this black tribe in the Isthmus of Darien. "That
conquistador," says Gomara, "entered the province of Quareca: he found
no gold, but some blacks, who were slaves of the lord of the place. He
asked this lord whence he had received them; who replied, that men of
that colour lived near the place, with whom they were constantly at
war...These negroes," adds Gomara, "exactly resemble those of Guinea;
and no others have since been seen in America (en las Indios yo pienso
que no se han visto negros despues.") The passage is very remarkable.
Hypotheses were formed in the sixteenth century, as now; and Petrus
Martyr imagined that these men seen by Balboa (the Quarecas), were
Ethiopian blacks who, as pirates, infested the seas, and had been
shipwrecked on the coast of America. But the negroes of Soudan are not
pirates; and it is easier to conceive that Esquimaux, in their boats
of skins, may have gone to Europe, than the Africans to Darien. Those
learned speculators who believe in a mixture of the Polynesians with
the Americans rather consider the Quarecas as of the race of Papuans,
similar to the negritos of the Philippines. Tropical migrations from
west to east, from the most western part of Polynesia to the Isthmus
of Darien, present great difficulties, although the winds blow during
whole weeks from the west. Above all, it is essential to know whether
the Quarecas were really like the negroes of Soudan, as Gomara
asserts, or whether they were only a race of very dark Indians (with
smooth and glossy hair), who from time to time, before 1492, infested
the coasts of the island of Hayti which has become in our days the
domain of Ethiopians.) The first travellers were easily deceived by
the crowds which the appearance of European vessels brought together
on some points of the coast.
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